To love means to destroy
by BobbyBoo'sbestfriend
Summary: As if the death of their youngest son hadn't been enough, Robert's illegimitate daughter steps into the Lightwood's life, worsening the relationship between Robert and his family. Born a year before Alec, Avril is the daughter of Annamarie Highsmith, the woman Robert had once had an affair with. When Valentine shows up again, Avril finds out that she is his greatest experiment.


**_Hello everyone! :)_**

**_This is something completely new! I have not dared to write a fanfiction about The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare but after the movie came out I somehow stumbled over an idea I once had and kind of re-wrote it. This is the first chapter of my story and you will notice that it is very, very similar to what Cassie Clare wrote in the book "City of Glass", Chapter 22. It is not the same though and will take off in a completely different direction so please don't judge me too hastily! ;)_**

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Her wrists were bound together with a faint band of glowing light, and her legs felt heavy and strange, prickling all over with intense pins and needles. She wondered if she'd lain on them strangely, or perhaps it was a side effect of nearly drowning. The back of her neck burned as if a wasp had stung her. With a gasp she heaved herself into a sitting position, legs stretched out awkwardly in front of her, and looked around.

She was on the shore of Lake Lyn, where the water gave way to powdery sand. A black wall of rock rose behind her, the cliffs she remembered from her time here with Luke. The sand itself was dark, glittering with silver mica. Here and there in the sand were witchlight torches, filling the air with their silvery glow, leaving a tracery of glowing lines across the surface of the water.

By the shore of the lake, a few feet away from where she sat, stood a low table out of flat stones piled one on the other. It had clearly been assembled in haste; though the gaps between the stones were packed in with damp sand, some of the rocks were slipping away at angles. Placed on the surface of the stones was something that made Clary catch her breath – the Mortal Cup, and laid crossways atop it, the Mortal Sword, a tongue of black flame in the witchlight. Around the altar were the black lines of runes carved into the sand. She stared at them, but they were jumbled, meaningless –

A shadow cut across the sand, moving fast – the long black shadow of a man, made wavering and indistinct by the flickering of the torches. By the time Clary raised her head, he was already standing over her.

Valentine.

The shock of seeing him was so enormous that it was almost no shock at all. She felt nothing as she stared up at her father, whose face hovered against the dark sky like the moon: white, austere, pitted with black eyes like meteor craters. Over his shirt were looped a number of leather straps holding a dozen or more weapons. They bristled behind him like a porcupine's spines. He looked huge, impossibly broad, the terrifying statue of some warrior god intent on destruction.

"Clarissa," he said. "You took quite a risk, Portaling here. You're lucky I saw you appear in the water between one minute and the next. You were quite unconscious; if it weren't for me, you would have drowned." A muscle beside his mouth moved slightly. "And I wouldn't concern yourself overmuch with the alarm wards the Clave put up around the lake. I took those down the moment I arrived. No one knows you're here."

_I don't believe you!_ Clary opened her mouth to fling the words in his face. There was no sound. It was like one of those nightmares where she would try to scream and scream and nothing would happen. Only a dry puff of air came from her mouth, the gasp of someone trying to scream with a cut throat.

A low chuckle from behind her made Clary flinch, partly from surprise but mostly because the sound was painfully familiar.

_Sebastian._

He loomed over her like a huge dark tower, unwilling to let her escape. The cold light of the torches gave his now fair hair a silvery, almost fairy-like glow that, hadn't it been for his black emotionless eyes that stood out like two endlessly dark tunnels, would have taken away a bit of the cruelty in his expressions.

Valentine shook his head. "Don't bother trying to speak. I used a Rune of Silence, one of those that the Silent Brothers used, on the back of your neck. There's a binding rune on your wrists, and another disabling your legs. I wouldn't try to stand – your legs won't hold you, and it'll only cause you pain."

Clary glared at him, trying to bore into him with her eyes, cut him with her hatred.

Valentine, noticing the hateful glare she shot at him, smiled slightly amused. "I do not expect your thanks, Clarissa, nor am I interested in keeping you alive for very much longer. You see, after all the brief encounters we've had in the past, I have never been able to tell you the reason why I never had a father's interest in you."

Valentine turned back to his altar and placed his hand on the Mortal Sword. The sword gave off a black light, a sort of reverse glow, as if it were sucking the illumination from the air around it.

"I didn't know your mother was pregnant with you when she left me," he said calmly. "If I had, perhaps I wouldn't have fed her Ithuriel's blood to cure her unhappiness. I'd already resolved not to experiment again on a child of my own blood."

_You're lying, _Clary wanted to scream at him. But she wasn't sure he was. He sounded strange to her. Different. Maybe it was because he was telling the truth.

"After she fled Idris, I looked for her for years," he continued. "And not just because she had the Mortal Cup. Because I loved her. When I finally tracked her down, I'd heard rumors she'd had another child, a daughter. I assumed you were Lucian's. He'd always loved her, always wanted to take her from me. I thought she must finally have given in. Have consented to have a child with a filthy Downworlder." His voice tightened. "When I found her in your apartment in New York, she was still barely conscious. She spat at me that I'd made a monster out of her first child, and she'd left me before I could do the same to her second. Then she went limp in my arms. All those years I'd looked for her, and that was all I had with her. Those few seconds in which she looked at me with a lifetime's worth of hate. I realized something then."

He lifted Maellartach. Clary remembered how heavy even the half-turned Sword had been to hold, and saw as the blade rose that the muscles of Valentine's arm stood out, hard and corded, like ropes snaking under the skin.

"I realized," he said. "That the reason she left me was to protect you. She didn't flee Idris to hide the Mortal Cup from me, Clarissa."

He lowered the Sword. The tip of it hung, now, just by Clary's face; she could see it out of the corner of her eye, floating at the edge of her vision like a silvery moth.

"She was hiding _you_." He said that last word with so much hatred and disgust and his dark eyes were like two burning sparks, boring into her own. "You are the only thing in the world she ever loved more than she loved me. And because of you she hates me. And because of that, I hate the sight of you."

He lowered the Sword further and Clary felt a sharp pain against her cheek. It was the blade of Maellartach. He was pressing the edge of it against her skin, trying to force her to turn her head toward him.

"You see now why I must kill you, Clarissa." The look in his dark eyes was cold as he stared down at her and then back across the lake. "I'm going to raise the Angel now," he said. "And I want you to watch as it happens."

There was a bitter taste in Clary's mouth as she watched her father gazing down at her. She felt Sebastian's – _Jonathan's _grip on her neck, forcing her to keep her head still.

"Blood is needed to complete this ceremony," Valentine said. "I intended to use my own, but when I saw you in the lake, I knew it was Raziel's way of telling me to use my daughter's instead. It's why I cleared your blood of the lake's taint. You are purified now – purified and ready. So thank you, Clarissa, for the use of your blood."

And in some way, Clary thought, he meant it, meant his gratitude. He had long ago lost the ability to distinguish between force and cooperation, between fear and willingness, between love and torture. The pain against her cheek sharpened and she could feel the hot blood running down her skin, splattering the sand.

Valentine turned and walked back toward the altar while Jonathan's grip tightened around her neck and Clary could hear her own blood rushing through her veins, her heart pounded restlessly in her chest and she could taste the salty flavor of her dried tears on her tongue.

"Watch, little sister," he whispered into her ear with a voice so sweet it was almost cruel. "Watch and look at the Angel that is going to wipe out your life. Watch how our victory will force your unworthy friends to their knees, begging for their lives to be spared."

The terrible slowing of time stretched around Clary like a strangling rope, while Valentine was now standing by the edge of the lake, blood streaming from the blade of Maellartach and dripping into the bowl of the Mortal Cup. He was chanting words she didn't understand. She didn't care to try to understand. It would all be over soon, and there was nothing Clary could do to help her friends. She thought about her mother, Luke and the Lightwoods. They had all gone through so much because of her. A silent tear ran down her cheek when she remembered Max and how Isabelle had blamed herself for his death. And the monster that had killed him was now holding her in a firm grip, almost pressing her down into the sand, making Clary watch the unreal scenery in front of her.

The runes surrounding the altar had begun to glow. They were runes of summoning, runes of naming, and runes of binding. They were not unlike the runes that had kept Ithuriel imprisoned in the cellar beneath the Wayland manor. Valentine was dipping the bloody Sword over and over in the water of the lake now, chanting low and fast. The water of the lake was rippling, as if a giant hand were stroking fingers lightly across its surface.

Valentine had the Mortal Cup in one hand and the Sword in the other. As she watched, he drew his right hand back, spoke several words that sounded like Greek, and threw the Cup. It shone like a falling star as it hurtled toward the water of the lake and vanished beneath the surface with a faint splash.

The circle of runes was giving off a faint heat, like a partly banked fire. Valentine had the Mortal Sword poised, ready to throw it – when suddenly a lashing sounded through the air, followed by a blur of silver light, knocking Maellartach out of Valentine's hand.

He swirled around, startled at the sudden interruption of the ceremony, Clary realized. Behind the altar laid the Sword, a faint glow of black light surrounding it but her gaze swept from the blade over to the shadow that stepped out of the darkness, picking Maellartach up from the ground and pointing it directly at Valentine's heart.

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_**That's it for the first chapter... :) Please give me some feedback so I know whether I should continue or not. ;) **_

_**What did you guys think about the new movie of "Coty of Bones"? Did you like it? ;) **_


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